Midsummer Nights
by OMGACookie
Summary: The pungent whiffs from the corpses of his people never bothered him, yet the only thing standing between his mind and his sleep was the thought of an alluring kitty cat. (AU)


Cookie Here,

Sorry for my super long hiatus, but I needed to take care of some of my personal things (namely getting rid of regrets before graduation) before getting back to my writing, which seems to have deteriorated since I last wrote... Significantly so. Thus, I'll refrain from writing more of re;start in favor of warming up through one shots until both you and I can agree on the fact that I've gotten my touch back. If you want to ask me about any more, with respect to life, geekdom or just about random stuff in general (and most importantly about these fics) feel free to leave a question on my tumblr at .com. I won't bother explaining it here, or it'll take up another two thousand some words.

This story takes place during the years of Jaune's disappearance (using it to build more of a back story to the AU but also as an excuse to have some room to practice my writing XD). And since you know what the pairing is from the description of the fic, I'll leave you to enjoy the rest.

Don't forget to leave a review with your thoughts on the story; I appreciate all the feedback I can get and, hopefully, I'll be back in shape to continue with Re;Start.

Enjoy :)

* * *

Sometimes, Sun would look to the empty streets, lamps dimmed with a surprising dearth of tail and head lights, and remember his time walking through the refugee camp during the extended, second Grim conflict. Back then, when he peeked into the odd tent here and there to interact with the locals and frolick about with the children and Ruby, occasionally resorting to entertaining them through riddles and physical games of tag or makeshift rugby. Anything went for those folks, and it stuck: Fairly soon after they would depart, the camps hailed them as heroes and saviors that, to this day, they still make contact with every once in a while to serve as an extension of a liaison to conduct planetwide recovery following Adam Taurus' streak of planetary devastation.

Every once in a while, though, he casually stroll across some nasty stuff: The war sometimes defiled the indiginous population with incurable sickness to the chagrin of their relatives, and injuries so severe that even Jaune couldn't stitch up even though he tried his best with every single case, complete with his signature blood spattered armor, sinew-stained gloves and a gaping hole in the guy's gut with a stench so horrible that Weiss puked for three connsecutive days just at the thought of it, only to refuse such field trips thereafter. But even that wasn't enough to keep him awake; in fact, it put him to sleep, knowing that things like that would never, or, at least, were less likely to, happen, due to his efforts. That way, he snored away in the comfort of having done deeds good enough to deserve his rest... Save for laughing when Weiss puked, she got pretty pissed.

Weissicle's frank anger aside, Sun peered over to his bedside clock, its argon illuminated digital display reading 1:00 AM. Not bad given how his sleepless nights were thus far, but still way past the time he could normally fall asleep by. He snatched a nearby pillow and planted it firmly on his face before shouting into the goosedown which graciously muffled his yell of frustration. Now that he thought about it, maybe his grumpy side could use some of the princess' sass to cool off share his troubles with that would inevitably end in a pissy comparison of their lives and how much they suck, which so happens to be every time she started drinking until the very last shot before she crumbled into a sloppy mess, that poor woman.

Regardless, he threw his pillow away and lay spread eagle, with his two piece PJs on, no less, on top of his king sized mattress, hardly fit for a fat king as he, worth his weight in more than gold or precious gems. Instead, the only weight present came from the immeasurable mental burden Sun could never. Justbefore his eyes began to flutter shut from sheer boredom, though, his Scroll lit the room with the absurd brightness of it's already smothered screen, followed by a chime arguably louder than his already obnoxious alarm clock.

_God damnit_.

He took his time to roll over and grimaced at the bursting nitrogen bubbles that sent spasmic jolts up his still healing spinal column as he inadvertantly popped his vertebrae back into place. Squinting to cope with the insanely bright screen of his Scroll, he took a brief peek, sighed, and then growled before promply smashing the useless piece of technological trash back onto his cushioned bedside table. Immediately, he lay a forearm across his forehead, mentally apologizing to the most utile communications device available for slamming it down. Then again, he was fairly certain that Nora's indiscriminate late night textings would cause anyone but Ren, who had the gumption of adapting by blocking her before going to sleep with a pair of earbuds, to find something to take their utter frustration with the troubled girl on. Thank god he got that thing he sometimes rolled over to hit his head on as a gift, a rather convenient and thoughtful for someone like him. Although, he swore that, at one point, said piece of furniture once belonged to a room in a psych ward, which meant that Velvet might have thought that he was slightly insane when she gave it to him.

Insane?

His spontaneous rumination halted on the subject of his mental health. What right does the world have to deem what is logical and crazy? Ethics classes taught him to consider the subjectivity of every topic. Insane could mean that he was completely fine with watching people beside him get blown to an appetizing combo of red mist that reeked of iron and tiny giblets that sometimes flew into his mouth when he shouted orders. Crazy could mean using a strategy that Jaune worked out that nobody could think of, or going gung-ho with Ruby when nothing came to mind. Both were considerably beyond the rational mind, alright, but both, Sun believed, were perfectly normal. That wasn't to say that those who didn't use said unconventional means weren't any less normal. Personally, he only thought them a little too... boring and he hated anything boring. One particular case in point, picking on Sky Lark, or whatever his name was, got boring and that used to be pretty fun; so he stopped doing it despite how much the guy deserved to crumble under social retribution.

Psych class, horribly mundane at best, taught him that one was more likely to grow crazy from boredom than by trauma, though this was subject to the moderation of time, cause, and effect. At first, he didn't believe Ozpin's words, scoffing at the possibility of leading a dull existence. A faunus like him who endured so much discrimination and shouldered the responsibility of being a hunter? Ha. Life definitely couldn't get boring with frequent chances to flex his muscles a bit and watch his foes flee in absolute terror before collapsing from his ruthless manner of law enforcement. Almost anyone could catch a challenge or two when about to snap some jerk's bones in half, with more satisfaction if they howled out in pain. For Sun, after he stopped being a career thief, though his pickpocketing and sneaky tendencies still remained, this was the best life he could ask for, pretty relaxed to for a place so messed up it took a two wars in four decades to fix up the little problems with a possible third on the way.

However, once he finished squaring off against huge black monstrosities dwarfing Cardin with little effort, little else in the normal world amused him. Sure, the occasional video game for his favorite console or a heinously funny circumstance at school entertained him, but nothing could beat the exhileration of taking down things that could squish or mangle him until nobody could recognize what remained of his body. It made him realize the power of being alive and kicking, literally, and put him through a nightmare he didn't want to repeat for the sake of everyone else. Only then, had he truly been selfless; only then had he felt so wonderful in his sheer craziness. And now that all this madness had gone away, sealed by Ruby's final blow to Adam's chest, plowing him through the floor until his blood smeared across its jagged surface, he was reduced to a bored monkey again with nothing better to do; wise instruction from his psychology class painfully realized in the worse way possible when he lost the oppurtunity to vent his stress manifested through justified physical destruction. Subsequently, after weeks of thought, Sun posited that the only thing left a wild card for him, were relationships.

Relationships, now those were crazy.

These things were practically pseudo wars fought with emotions so unquantifiable and unpredictable to even the smartest of minds that nobody knew when, where or what to do anything but sit tight and watch drama flood from the two, or more, subjects. The world "relationship" in and of itself, according to one of Jaune's brilliant dissertations specifically dealing with the abuse of colloquial vocabulary, became associated mostly to romantic interaction, though it originally meant nothing more a matter of mutual dependence. Herein lied Sun's inability to act on sentiment, knowing full and well that he could not run the risk if his significant stood in the way of his duty as a hunter. Push come to shove, he would have to face the harrowing dilemna between the sake of the world and that of a single individual and he knew that in any scenario nothing would sway him from spilling the blood of whoever he loved before wasting that of all man and faunus kind. But he didn't worry so much, for as Yang's teasings graciously informed him, the only blood drawn is the love at first blood... Or if someone got too wild for the other. He didn't bother asking Yang how she knew that.

『I don't enjoy relationships," Blake then confessed, shortly after Yang had her turn during circle time one night. "I've never been fond of opening up; since I've never really had the chance to, I don't know where to start."

Upon further consideration, neither did he. All the effort put into choosing the right flowers for date night, time spent with the other just to inch an inconsequential bit closer but never so successful as to land lips and hold hands with every meeting, and money wasted on mindlessly treating people to dinner could be put to better use. Had most of Vale's young population done that, then maybe they'd be as wealthy as Sun, if not more. After all, while he was a smart, charming and resourceful monkey, there still were plenty better people out there that could best him if they hadn't chose to squander their precious resources. Besides, with respect to her third point, the first foreign to Sun and the second previously explained, even if he did want to start one, where would he begin? Sending a bunch of bananas with a love note? On a further tangent, what the hell was a love note anyways?

Damn right she was about relationships and how little sense they made, but how wrong she could be had she known what he'd thought.

Regardless of how he would excuse dating as a ridiculous prospect of wasting time for no productive reason, he didn't mind doing the same thing for her. Something about spending a morsel of what he had with her felt good, rewarding almost, if not satisfying. She was the only person around whom he couldn't intentionally joke around without feeling like a jerk sometimes. When at odds with how the world worked, he could always count on her to share her reading with what he managed to muster in his mind. They would look at the stars on dull nights when command had nothing for them to do but sit tight and discuss their childhoods, both relatively scarring and essentially nonexistent. She was a crutch for him to lean on when he couldn't piece together the profound, and he returned her favor in the form of moral support when he could and the occasional physical thing or two when she got too beat up by the larger, harder-hitting Grimm. They lived in a comfortable symbiosis, the natural order of life even at a cellular leve, to keep each other alive but Sun wasn't so confident that the other party couldn't survive without him.

Nonetheless, this was all when the Grimm conflict continued to escalate and Vale had little to no idea of what was coming. Some say it was pure luck, a damned good stroke of fortune, that Ozpin managed to pick up the otherwise inconsequential signs: The slight shifts in the economy, patterns in small time thefts that added to larger sums, and even Blake's little get up in her first year. When he finally figured everything out, it was almost too late, as the Grimm had poured through the outer cities and threatened to reach the harbor and cross into Vale itself. Sun found himself in particular oppurtunity to showcase his skills then, but Blake was the one who reminded him that skills weren't everything when the world was at stake. Yet, of all the people he'd first met, everyone faced the possibility of losing something physical and material as their primary motivation for fighting: Pyrrha's hometown was isolated from the rest of civilization, sieged by Adam's Legions, Ruby and Yang came close to losing their surrogate father, Weiss' family monopoly basically toppled onto it's hinges to support the war effort, and Blake just... Decided she'd fight for good because she didn't want anyone else to have nothing left. Even today, Sun had a little trouble understanding her blatant lack of a proper incentive, if she even had an incentive at all other than revenge, but that was all still part of her appeal: Always so distant, so afraid and alone.

Something about being there for her, the very idea of being present when she needed him most, appealed to him: It was a sense of duty he knew the world assigned him when they first briefly met at the docks, only for him to find her sobbing by the statue of Beacon one day, and he supposed he was right. Through the entirety of the second Grimm conflict, he took care to allot time for them to spend together, ensuring that she didn't rescind her nobility in favor of sitting on the floor, hopeless to watch her people and others die before her eyes. But just as the conflict ended, so did their interactions begin to wane. Over time, she returned to the attention of her team and began to grow distant again, so detatched that all she could spare him was a kind "hello" before marching off with Ruby in the front of their conga line. He, helpless to peaceful change, would pretend that he'd only dozed off to avoid the accusations, no doubt already denied multiple times, his teammates relentlessly harassed him with out of good spirit.

Thus rose his odd predicament of lying in bed every once in a while, pupils dilated as he lost visual focus of his bedroom ceiling, half expecting messages from his hospital or friends to come from her, only to relent to his fatigue, but ever so hopeful that the last ping delivered him from her agonizing absence. Alas, he kept checking them anyways, foregoing his rest in favor of a chance to have her message him first, for once. Just once, he imagined, she would initiate their long conversations by way of text messaging in lieu of meeting in person and maybe it was proof that she hadn't discarded him as a crutch whenever her broken bones solidified enough to have her figuratively, and literally, walk on by herself.

If his hopes weren't high enough already, he knew that tonight would not be that one time when his phone buzzed again, but still opted to check the message anyways.

**_Up for a round of drinks?_**

_God damn it, Yang._

He swore at himself for cursing so readily before wearily tapping a response.

**_Where at?_**

Sun grew impatient and growled at the lag in Yang's response. She should know better.

**_You should know._**

And that he did.

_**I'll be there in ten, meet you at the counter**. _

Twenty pain-staking seconds later, Sun's phone vibrated again and he scrambled to receive her message that was all but a simple,

_**Okay,**** bye**._

Either Yang was really fed up with her life and wanted to drown herself today, or this wasn't Yang at all. Ergo, Sun thought he could probably use a drink or two as well so he understood.

He didn't so much as bother with his standard fashion doctrine and simply slipped a pair of brown loafers on, foregoing the notion that anything could happen and that he needed to be ready. As for clothes, he dragged the first set he could find from the drawer, which was a nice match of a pair of smart casual pants, a T-shirt he bought at a market one day that read "MARK NUTT," presumably a brand he didn't bother to recognize, and a patterned green hoodie. He packed his nunchucks in his underslung holster beneath his hoodie, set the hood up, twisted the knob and waltzed out the door to the lift. There, he waited, until either the lift came up or he went down the stairs. Anything would do now, as long as it kept his mind off Blake, the absence thereof, or her mesmerizing, gold eyes.

_God damn it_.

* * *

Cabs, he soon learned, were hard to come by at such a late hour, especially during the weekdays when the public's sense of insecurity for most things went rampant and no one left the house after ten. Only fools went on the street at night, fools and people who just couldn't care less, Sun belonging to both sides of the spectrum that exempted cab drivers, since, they could make an extra buck or two by driving a drunk around town if they were lucky enough. Sadly, the driver who had mistakenly identified Sun as one of those pathetic excuses of human existence, mindlessly wandering around a residential area, soon learned that the latter was, in fact, sober enough to cheekily remind him that he was taking the long way and didn't give a tip when he got off for deviating from the fastest route.

Seconds before he entered the door, Sun prepared his ever neutral smirk, bordering the lines of a smug grin. In time, after months of slapstick humor and insensitive jokes, that's how most of his friends came to know him as, with Blake the only one aware of how cynical and pensive he could be. Yang may have caught some traces here and there when they drank, normally because no one else was available, but he successfully got her drunk enough to disregard his odd behavior. Besides, if they thought his smile so bright, he figured it'd be best to leave them in the dark.

"Welcome back," the bartender chimed, a welcoming smile returning to the lips beneath his slightly tinted glasses, the lenses that hid the mesmerizing pupils he used to peer into the souls of his customers. "Tequila?"

"You know just the way I like it," Sun chuckled. "Thanks, man."

"No problem. Let me know if you need anything else."

He waited at the bar for a little, fiddling with the little peanuts at the counter and flicking them at a makeshift goal using two shakers and a napkin, silently ripping off his shirt and running around with his arms spread into wings, screaming the chant of victory at the top of his lungs in his mind whenever he managed to curve the projectile into a perfect shot. Granted, it wasn't the best entertainment for a long wait, considering Yang's horrible sense of tardiness, but it beat the soccer tournaments on television. Truth be told, it all felt so fake after his favorite team somehow lost in the qualifiers that he preferred changing the course of history in his video games, intentionally picking the worst teams to win with as his own tacit insult. With the number of goals he just scored with a nut and his index finger, he might've well won the World Cup himself. When his drink finally came, the bartender bickered about with him about soccer after noticing his miniature penalty shot range along the counter, to which Sun simply laughed it off and watched a couple of the worst plays made the day before on the TV before finally taking a sip of his tailor made drink.

Several other things had bothered him after he landed his fifteenth goal. For one, his drink contained more fizz than usual, which was a good thing for the drink but bad for his longing for falling asleep. Speaking of odd behavior, the message from Yang felt overly cryptic and formal, much less flirtatious than he already expected; Yang, promiscuous as she normally acted, never spelled anything correctly in her messages either, relying instead on abbreviations of society's current meta that Sun himself had a trouble keeping up with. A well endowed female such as she should have no reservations of her beauty or ego. On that, Sun could not disagree. So when he heard the wall mounted bell ring to the sound of the bar's creaking door, he halfheartedly expected Yang to walk in depressed and offered,

"What's wrong, Yangarang? Caught the blues again?"

The eerie lack of an immediate response followed by a manic yell for a giant mug of beer kept Sun frozen to his seat, who decided that he'd best shut up before the blondie's fury extended to him for his playful words. Instead, his eyes diverted to the empty glass of tequila that sat nice and pretty in all of its transparent and ornate beauty along the laquered wood. The wide eyes of nearby customers and the bartender himself, seen from the reflection of his glass and the counter, solidified his conclusion. Except, he was wrong.

"Not sure why she likes that name, but I have to admit, it sticks."

He could recognize that voice from anywhere.

"Blake?"

In an uncharacteristic display of surprise, Sun turned around with a certain eagerness to his simmering enthusiasm. It took him a while to remind himself about the cool image he had, and not that of some jumpy kid ready to pounce by the impulses of his hormones: Clad in a glittering cocktail dress with a thin fabric that simulated material shadow, Blake stood and inch taller than usual with a pair of closed toed stilettos on her feet, eyes lit by the same enigmatic shimmer that trapped his soul. Once more, he left his chin to drop and eyes to wander and nearly swore again, before restraining himself by clamping his mouth shut and pushing his lips inwards to bite down on as an extra precaution.

"Hey."

God how he loved that voice.

"Let me guess," he exhaled to release what air he had stored prior to the possibility of suffocating from sheer joy, and closed his eyes. "You used Yang's phone."

"Yeah."

"Couldn't figure out how to use your own?"

"I..."

He waited a while, lowering his head a little to peer at the tiny blush that crept beneath her obfuscating bangs.

"I don't know," she finally admitted. "I guess I was too tired to figure out which one it was."

That's when he finally remembered how Yang and Blake shared a room. He threw a drunk fit of jealousy at the former one day because of that.

"Plus, last I remember," he added, an indignant finger raised in her direction. "You don't drink."

"I do now," she smirked. "I'd like a whiskey, please."

"Coming right up, Miss Belladonna."

Experience taught Sun that anyone's first drink shouldn't be too hard of a liquor, he made the mistake himself when he blindly accepted another monkey faunus' offer on a swig of homebrewed moonshine. So when Blake's drink slid across the counter, he shot a concerned glare of disbelief, an eyebrow raised to go with his tiny grin. His feline companion on the other hand, rolled her eyes and almost poured the entirety of the cup filled mostly with ice with a slither of brown liquid into her mouth, gracing the bar's customer's a snicker from her subsequent gag reflex and flurry of coughs.

"Good stuff, huh?"

Blake looked at him, embarassed, face far deeper a shade of scarlet from usual courtesy of the alcohol, before shrinking her lips into the same pout that had him falling for her the first time. Nevertheless, Sun had already drank too much to care.

"Congratulations on almost downing your first drink," he deadpanned. "How's it feel to finally have your braincells killed?"

"Horrible, actually," she admitted, returning to her indifferent disposition. "But I can see why it can feel therapeutic."

At Sun's request, the bartender left them to their own company, half fueled by the relinquishing effects of their liberating concoctions, the other half more by their mutual grumpiness. From afar, fellow hunters and huntresses looked on with respectful glances, earning a wave or two from Sun and a gentle scowl, less intimidating and aloof than usual as was best she could do in public, from Blake. The two kept at it until they grew too entranced by the idea of conversation and intoxication that they simply ignored everything else but the subject matter, ranging from current faunus politics to the new cape on Ruby's battle uniform and Nora's recent pancake malfunction that left JNPR's room in flames.

To his surprise, Blake could handle her alcohol rather well for a first timer. An hour and eight drinks later, Blake only showed weak signs of faltering, as did Jaune, whereas everyone else fell into appropriate places along the spectrum of alcohol tolerance. Ah, yes, he remembered how their Saturday night getups went, the ones where Ren and Pyrrha couldn't so much as stifle a hard guffaw after their seconds, what with Ren participaing in Nora's antics and Pyrrha practically drooling on Jaune whilst begging to get in his pants. Sadly, neither of them remembered what happened that night and the entirety of the participants solemnly swore secrecy and a vow not to disclose Ren's sprinting around without his clothes on after losing an arm-wrestling match against his partner, who joined shortly after.

But the kitty cat never drank, resorting, instead, to the assortment of nuts as an alternative to her catnip. She would always serve as the rational and level-headed caretaker of all the fools who went far beyond the namesake of her bar-table snack, responsible as always; it never got old. While the blonde haired beast of a woman, to his standards, might've gotten frustrated with her, Sun did not, insisting that she leave if she didn't enjoy watching her friends tarnish their reputation even though she would never leave for reasons he couldn't fathom.

"I actually thought that it was kind of fun," she admitted after her twelfth, wincing at the dull sensation that lulled at her cerebral cortex. "Watching people go beyond measurable idiocy."

"So why didn't YOU ever drink?"

Her ears, still hidden beneath that neatly tied bow, wriggled a little as she smirked.

"Being part of the crowd of morons before you is far less entertaining than watching them fully alert."

To that, he grinned and downed another tequila as the bartender looked on in confusion and awe that both had somehow managed to drink more than humanly possible. They weren't human, of course, and the poor bartender hadn't the slightest clue since they'd hidden their true genetic ancestry rather well everytime they came. That, or the bartender actually knew all along after he took a long hard glance into the depths of their mind with those piercing irises of his, and didn't care to treat them differently. In the eyes of most considerate people, they seemed pretty normal anyways.

"I gotta hand it to you two," he finally said, wiping the residue liquor from the wood to prevent the counter from being damaged in the stereotypical, bartender fashion. "Most people would be unconscious or a complete heap of useless fat, bone and muscle right now. Drinks from here on out are on the house, you guys are regulars anyways."

Both faunus politely obliged, easily forcing down a couple more glasses with no real disorientating sensation other than headaches and uncontrollable laughter. When Sun had been interrogated during his brief captivity at the hands of the rogue White Fang, they injected a truth serum in him that, arguably, had less effect on him than did what he consumed that night. Truthfully, Sun didn't think it wasn't the alcohol that made him talk, but he shared what he could still consciously grasp on his days of captivity. Blake listened on with her bewitching stare that squeezed every detail out of his mind straight from his pupils in a dazzling pose with her head propped up by her right arm, her left hand holding her glass while he spoke. When he finished, she would pick up with a story of her own about her night patrols with her team and the ethereal experiences that haunted her to the very day. All of a sudden, he felt like they'd already rekindled their mutual trust that brought them together to begin with, delivered unto happiness at last.

Still barely conscious of his honesty, Sun continued to spew his opinion on the philosophical musings, on how he thought that hopeless wars should be fought anyways for subjective victory or on the way people would prefer to go with the crowd to understand it, only to defect from decadence later. His companion said little but to cite several examples to support his theses. Soon, the moved back to interrogating each other when their scholarly moods died down, and Sun grew frustrated at how evasive she became when he realized that all his questions met their dead ends when she answered with a question of her own. Over time, Sun found out that he had pretty much no reason to mince words and decided to go for a more direct approach.

"Why don't you ever call?"

Blake spit her drink back into the cup when she gagged on an ice cube, and lifted a finger while she recovered before slipping into a pensive daze for a minute.

"I couldn't," she murmured, possibly an indication that she spoke honestly. "Our team has rules that... Well, I just can't sometimes and.. We have rules, you know?"

"I see that," he grumbled.

"I kind of... wanted to... though," she squeaked. "That's... well... yeah."

"You could at least send a message sometimes. I almost thought you didn't exist for a while."

"Ridiculous," she giggled. "We see each other nearly every day. There's no need to."

"But we never really talk when that happens, do we?"

"Yeah..." she'd returned to her solemn scowl. "I guess we don't."

They chased each other around with interrogatives for a while, the other customers gathering in the corner to watch the next game in the soccer tournament overseas. A couple stumbled by in their stupor and crashed through the main door as the two, covert faunus looked on in concern for their safety. Neither decided to act on their sympathy due to the slight intoxication that unshackled a fraction of what indifference they were capable of. Rather than pester them with queries on getting another round, the bartender filled two jugs with their drinks for them to pour themselves while he attended to the guests by the gargantuan plasma television.

Turned out, though, that after another full hour and three quarters of both of their jugs, Blake displayed physical signs of exhaustion and Sun had pretty much run out of topics to discuss with her other than how he felt, which, to Yang's dogged insistence, he, by all means, should've sat her down to elucidate but didn't in favor of keeping things steady between them. Sun paid his tab with a rather gratuitous tip before hovering next to Blake as she calmly walked out the door. Once outside, though, Blake nearly smashed her face into a pole and Sun had basically sat down on the curb with his head between his knees to catch his breath before standing back up with double eyelids and furrowed brows. Topaz met garnetts as they nodded to assure the other that they were fine until the feline leaned into his chest to prevent herself from tipping over for a bit, just to be sure. Eventually, Sun set her aside and walked down the sidewalk.

"I'm going to find a cab," he said.

"I'll come with you," she concurred, slowly waltzing her way over.

"Don't you have to go home too?"

"Am I not allowed to share a cab?"

He shot her a glare to question her motives and turned away when he became aware that he'd just missed a fleeing taxi whose license plate so happened to be the same as the one belonging to the deceitful bastard who drove him here.

"That's another question."

She waved his response off, swirling her head, and waist long hair with it, away from him as to look for a cab coming from the opposite direction.

"It's a one way street, Blake." He bluntly reminded.

And again, she did not say a word and kept her head away. He sighed and kept looking down the correct direction, but he knew that she'd done the same: He had known the gaze of her eyes so well that he could tell where she was looking; he had followed in the footsteps for so long, with the intent of helping her, that he grew frustrated with the sound of his own; he had known her smile for so long, that he grew mad with the only image he could find of her in the camera he brought to their vacations. Such was the madness he endured, the one this stupid, black, hybrid cat beside him appeared so god damned oblivious to that his tail would rip its own fur off.

But to his surprise, Blake tapped him on the shoulder, and when he turned around, there sat a cab, neatly parked to the side of the street hymning the calming rumble of its engine to the rhythm of his heart.

"It's a two way street now," she playfully teased, almost seducing the driver to wait for her a little longer.

"Since when?"

She responded to his holler by opening the cab door for him with a grin.

"Ever since."

Sun smiled, flashed a mock face of indignant annoyance before hustling over to the cab for a ride home.

* * *

When they arrived, the streets were as silent as Sun remembered them to be every night. Hidden within the cosmopolitan metropolis lay bare the residences of lethal enforcers of the city, Sun included, who watched over its land without a sound, their eyes, sharper than the edges of their blades, butchering the very essence of those who dared entertain the thought of crime. Such was the redoubtable presence of their profession, only a fraction of what fables the public revelled in of Beacon graduates with scintillating pupils; Such was the definite security that countered the insecurity caused by criminals and monsters alike.

He was certain their gazes would falter slightly if they caught sight of Blake, in a rather odd cocktail dress she would die before getting caught in, next to a haphazardly clad monkey standing around on the street. Only after they got off the car did Sun begin to wonder how underdressed he might have seemed for an encounter with Lady Belladonna standing next to him in her glamorous short-cut dress and perfectly styled hair, her hands clutching looked like a... purse? He wasn't sure if the alcohol had redered his mind a derelict enough to hallucinate that Blake was even at the bar with him. Perhaps that's why his first glass had too much fizz?

Blake handed the driver something, bowed a little and thanked him, before the cab sped off into the city's void. Sun stood and pointed a finger at the disappearing mode of transportation for the perceivable future.

"But you need that cab to get back ho-"

She hushed him with a finger to his lips, brushed against the soft membrane filled with sensory neurons so numbed that his brain almost overloaded by her touch. But with what remaining willpower he had, he forced himself to stay standing, silent and anxious.

"I know."

He caught on soon enough after scratching his head at the reality that she wasn't about to go home before regressing into a cheeky grin. Out of a customary manner, he offered Blake the accommodation she intentionally coerced him into giving through her underhanded tactic of manipulating reality such that he could only adapt to what happened there on. Doubtless, she'd accepted with little qualm but a nonchalant shrug. Because Blake had heels on, Sun took to the elevator, despite how long it took to come down from the twelfth floor, forgetting that she fought with heels on anyways and she didn't hate the stairs so much as he did.

"Make yourself at home," he chimed the moment they walked through the door. Blake took her heels off and put them by the shoe rack to her left and slowly turned her head to capture the panoramic of his abnormally large apartment, and Sun could tell that she was scanning for any sort of surveillance, only to emerge from her trance surprised at the absolute degree of trust he had in society as to not be as paranoid as she. After Sun threw his keys back into the little glass bowl by the door where he stashed coins and little tidbits he found on the street, he circled around in his bare feet and waved a hand in front of Blake's face to make sure she wasn't dosing off.

"Is this the first time you've been to my house?"

"I think so," she gasped, sauntering over to the dining table to sweep her hand over the perfectly tarnished, dark wood furniture

He let her marvel a little over the minutiae scattered around his domain just to keep her occupied enough for him to change and grab a set of slacks for her to wear to sleep: The tiny animal figures he collected during his spare time, the video game guides and notes he collected in the shelf under his massive television taller than she, even that stupid dinky pendulum thingy with a suspended, chrome frame from which dangled six metal balls that kept hitting the last on each side outwards until it drove someone crazy. When she couldn't quite grasp the substance of said objects, she would follow with a curious tilt of her head, or a gentle pat by the finger before picking the object up to inspect it. She made it to the swinging metal pendulum, powered by the inertia and centripital force of its revolving sticks to stay mobile forever when he intervened by clearing his throat.

"Careful," he warned. "That thing's really hypnotizing."

Immediately, she placed the pendulum back onto the shelf and moved onto the tiny mousetrap-like contraption that actually clamped her finger down, causing her to squeak, and squirted water at her face. Sun kept the humor to himself and changed back into his PJs before returning to the living room. By then, Blake had sped across a third of his apartment, the arrangement of articles that intrigued her only slightly different than he remembered. _No matter_, he concluded, _at least she's enjoying herself_.

When she reached the display shelf above the artificial fireplace, she found the customary living room artwork display, this time in the form of digital photo frames with varying images anging from their first birthday celebration, Yang's, with Blake casually smirking in the corner as she watched Yang's bosom slowly smush Jaune's homebaked cake while Ruby leaned on her sister's back, to their day out at the beach, when something managed to cut the forward string holding Pyrrha's bikini top together and she scrambled to cover her chest, to Jaune's chagrin and the laughter of Yang, Nora and Velvet alike. Another gift from Velvet, this one long after she sent him the bedside table, his frames were actually holographic touchpads that could access the entirety of his photo collection that he uploaded to the database. No doubt did curiousity guide the cat, but this time not to her death; for a collection of sentimentality, hijinks and trivial matters, however, she semed throughly amused.

"I didn't know that you liked keeping pictures."

"Well," he shrugged. "Some moments are worth keeping."

Several minutes into her browsing, he grew adamant that she'd stumbled across the most conspicuous subsection of his archives. She had a penchant for looking at things with her own name, but then again, so would anyone. What she would find in that very same folder were an assortment of photos of her, in all sorts of places: There was one where he'd caught her hiding in a bush to peer at Yang, another when she actually smiled amongst her team at Morgan's Steakhouse, and, of course, a reaction shot of her distressed body and face expression after being drenched with cold wateron April Fools. Any other man, or beast, could kiss his life goodbye if Blake ever found. But, somehow, Sun knew that it wouldn't be rage that sauntered around when she found those photos, which was instead met with light chuckles as she scrolled through them.

"Hey, I didn't know you had a photo of this."

Sun shuffled over and snorted when he saw that the picture Blake loaded onto the display was of when the two of them caught a massive grouper while on vacation, himself with a goofy straw hat and a stick of wheat in his teeth pointing to Blake, who held the thirty five pounder in her hands with pride scrawled all over her magnificent smirk.

_Of course_.

"The fisherman took it and shared with me on social media," he elucidated. "What? He didn't share it with you?"

"Maybe I didn't talk to him enough to be friends?"

"Gee, ya think?"

She stuck her tongue out at him and he did the same in return, causing both of them to chuckle and scroll through the rest of his collection. They sat down on his living room couch and linked the display to his TV screen that initially blinded them with its boot-up screen, but eventually dimmed to accomodate for the atmosphere and time of day. From there, Blake picked out the ones of their first days together, shortly after she ran away to catch a break from being part of her tea: She found the photo of her first time eating a takoyaki, frozen into place with her puffed cheeks of delight, at the Vale fair with Yang. Two taps and a swipe later, she brought up their first "date," so to speak, at a cafe while the others tried to win at a tug of war against Professor Port. Boy, was that fat old geezer strong.

"You looked better without the bow," he complained. "And between you and me, I find your ears cute."

She flushed and stammered before thanking him for his compliment and hastily swiping to the next photo, and the next, until, finally, she decided to return the display back to the fireplace ridge and asked if she could crash at his house for the night, which he figured out earlier when she didn't seem to want to leave.

"The guest room's over there," he pointed to the room across from his. "I just changed the sheets today and I'm fairly certain I put a lot of pillows on that, if three isn't enough for a bed of that size... I could also set up a scratching post and litter box if you'd like."

She pouted in the same way that sent him, his mind and his tongue fumbling around with his words.

"J-just kidding," he stuttered.

Blake bowed slightly with her hands in front of her as he turned to go to bed. He half expected himself to run back and recklessly charge into a session of physical intimacy he had no idea how else to initiate.

"Thanks Sun."

He froze for a second, vehemently refusing to swing around and face her, who would undoubtedly be producing a maudlin smile.

"Don't mention it."

Sun staggered his way back into his room and carefully tugged on the handle of his door enough and kept his conscience firmly on keeping himself from collapsing out of disbelief that Blake was actually IN HIS HOUSE... Across the living room, no less, at an inevitable distance keeping her far away enough for his laziness to reject the idea of getting up again, walking over, and joining her in that massive bed so ridden with pillows that Ruby would never want to move out if she came in. He would restrain himself and rationalize that if 24 glasses of tequila couldn't knock him down, this wouldn't either. Unfortunately for him, this mantra lasted a mere ten minutes before his own bedroom door creeked open and in strode a scantily clad Blake, who wore nothing but her lingerie. Sun felt a vein in his nose pop.

"Move over."

As instructed, Sun shuffled his body further to the far side of the bed relative to the door, almost too far enough that he'd briefly lost balance and nearly rolled off the mattress and onto the hardwood floor. When he stopped moving, Blake slid under the covers with him and started stroking at his tail, possibly oblivious to the fact that the very act sent an overflow of euphoria that intoxicated his brain to think only of mercilessly ravishing her until she couldn't walk the next day. Discarding the notion came easily when he reminded himself that he would be a nice guy and restrain himself to let her feel more safe around him, even if the opputunity felt extremely enticing.

"Why join me here?"

"The other room was too cold," she reasoned. "Needed a bit more body warmth."

"Yang's breasts too good to be replaced by pillows?"

"Something like that."

Having heard that, Sun wriggled a bit closer towards her and stopped when she wrapped her arms around him, her fingers barely catching hold of his tail. Before he could wrestle it out of her grasp, though, she had already aroused him enough for his tail to fall limp and prey to her magical touch.

"I've always wondered why I didn't have a tail," she whispered, hand gliding up and down his flexed, rear appendage.

"Got the wrong Chromosome, maybe," he offered, rushing his syllables to hide his excitement. "Maybe tails are linked to Y."

"Always the professional when I least want you to," she giggled.

"Hey," he retorted. "At least, I'm applying my learning, like you said I should."

"True."

She stopped only after she kneaded and squeezed every segment of his tail, letting it fall between them by his lumbar vertebrae and her abdomen. He caught a break when he managed to drift off a little, barely seeping into the giant pool of his dreamworld, but her gentle poke at his waist hoisted him back up from the volatile liquid sedative.

"Could you... Scratch my ears a little?"

Sun rolled over to face her, nose mere millimeters away from her own, with an expression riddled with confusion.

"I-I ask Yang to do it to me sometimes when I can't sleep... If you don't mind..."

He graced her with a genuine smile before nodding.

"Turn around."

She politely smiled in return and obeyed his request. Sun paused for a second, afraid that he'd somehow become too imposing and brash with his approach, and waited for her signal, as he did when they were snooping around White Fang territory back in the day. This, ultimately, felt way more dangerous than the possibility of getting caught, tortured, castrated and crucified, all of which could've happened if he didn't have Blake as a cautious partner to his rowdy exhuberance.

"Be gentle."

Of course he would. Eventually, his scratching became a tender stroke down her hair, fingers lacing through her curly locks, and into something of a head massage that made her curl up and purr again. Sun kept at it for a while, hoping that she was satisfied or somehow falling alseep before he did so he could leave before his hormones dictated otherwise. Sadly, she kept shifting about for him to reach places she wanted him to touch and he had spoiled her anyways, thinking she would return the favor one day, or within the next twenty seconds when he demanded,

"Why did you come to my house?"

"Yang's snoring kept me awake."

"That doesn't explain why you wanted to go out."

"You know how she doesn't keep food at home."

"And again, you don't really drink."

"Like I said, I do now."

And finally, he lost his patience.

"All of that's a lie, isn't it?"

She knew it too.

"C'mon Blake, why did you come here? No more excuses now."

He stopped scratching when she fell silent, hoping to drive her mad with the lack of his comforting massage around the areas he knew cats instinctively love to have their caretakers fondle with. Eventually, she started to shuffle and squirm as to plea for him to continue, but he would not grant her that privilege, not unless she became honest with herself and him.

"Because I wanted to spend some time with you," she finally confessed.

"And?"

"What do you mean 'and'? I just wanted to."

"Why's that?"

She pouted again, flustered and weakened.

"You're a jerk, you know that?"

He nodded and poked her nose, to which she flinched and growled.

"Meanie."

"Now tell me," he persisted. "Why did you come over?"

"I... I wanted to. I just wanted to. I don't know how else to say it. I.. I know sounds really strange, though, but I don't know where to start and I just really wanted to find you an-"

Sun pre-emtively silenced his bedmate with a reckless kiss, almost missing her mouth but barely lower enough to catch her upper lip. She froze a while, shivering as her hands temporarily flashed a brief chill before wrapping them around his neck to pull him closer. He didn't do the same in kind, but parted from her to let her catch some oxygen before asphyxiating, evident in the panting he'd reduced her to by the time his head lurched far back enough to see her entire head. She waited a while, eyes frantically trying to keep away from his gaze under shame or repressed lust, but Sun didn't care. He leaned forward again and whispered in her ear,

"Was that so hard?"

Blake let herself blush and didn't try to hide her pleasure, golden eyes staring back at Sun's comforting gaze with a cryptic desire so deep it'd almost become passion. But then she looked down and into the blanket, eyes wandering downwards before parting a slight gasp of surprise and embarassment. Shortly afterwards, she regained her composure, licked her lips and purred, moving closer to his face for round two with a mischievous grin on her face,

"Not as hard as you."

Yes, Sun knew he had stayed up for a reason and no longer doubted the purpose of his longing. Not while her scent stuck through his nostrils with every heated kiss they shared, or with the softness of her skin when they tried to rip each others clothes off to surrender to their carnal instincts. Decent or not, he was tired of holding back and halfway through their midsummer night's frivolity he was sure that she wanted him to forget about just being a good man and draw her blood as her first. Because this time, she couldn't sleep without him either, and he could no longer because of her presence.

* * *

That's it. I'm no good with the racey stuff, so I like to leave segments like that blank. After all, this is supposed to be a family friendly show, but I may have made it a little too graphic, huh.

For a one-shot, my very first intended one-shot, I say that was a success, though it did take me a while to finish it up (7 days to write and brainstorm and another 5 ish days to read as opposed to the re;start chapters I wrote and edited in 7 days, only to modify them while I continued drafting the future chapters). I think I'll do two or three more before I really get back into the mood of writing. So the next one shot will focus on Weiss and her thoughts on her relationship with Jaune before he disappeared and a formal outing with Pyrrha. Until then, I look forward to hearing what you thought of this chapter~


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